When Jacob was born, I bought a scrapbook and kit to make a “Baby’s First Year” scrapbook. Now that Lucas (baby #2) is here, I’m glad I only scrapped Jacob’s first year and kept it simple. Here are a few tips for scrapbooking when you no longer have baby’s nap times for personal down time!
Buy a scrapbooking package. For both boys, I bought a package of matching paper and embellishments for a baby boy. It takes less time, and the package comes with stickers and pre-cut letters and deco.
Keep the design simple. My goal is to record the special moments in their first year. That just includes pasting the best photos and basic journaling. I don’t go heavy on embellishments or creativity. I started matting photos on the first couple pages and then stopped.
Label photo files when you download them from the camera. I don’t label all the photo files, but I label a few that I might forget. For example, I’ve been taking a photo of Lucas every month, so I label that photo “5 months” or “6 months” when I download it. I don’t download them regularly, so it becomes fuzzy a few months later when I’m trying to remember when they were taken.
Write important information/notes on the backs of photos. After I print photos, which is once every couple months, at best, I’ll write notes on the back of good ones and file them with all the photos in a large photo album. When I get ready to scrapbook, I can pull the photos I want from the album.
Mark milestones on the kitchen calendar. I know, from having Jacob, that there are a lot of milestones in the baby book waiting to be filled out. Instead of pulling the book out each time to record something (which I know won’t happen), I jot down things on our kitchen wall calendar (Lucas rolled over, first tooth, etc) . Maybe, when he’s about one, I’ll have time to fill in the spaces and can just flip through the calendar.
Print your Facebook wall page. I’ve done this a few times, but it prints everything. A lot of my statuses are about the boys, so printing the page gives me a record. I read a discussion on Facebook recently that someone is coming up with an app to sort your posts and print the ones you want. It’s not available yet.
Keep your camera easily accessible. We keep our camera on top of a bookshelf in our family room. It’s high enough up that Jacob can’t reach it, but we can grab it for a quick shot.
Schedule some kid-free scrapbooking time. I asked Nelson to take the boys to bed a few months ago and created a few pages. I was up until midnight and tired the next day, but it did get done. I’ve also sent them to the babysitter’s for a few hours and scrapbooked.
Keep your materials in one convenient place. Mine are all stuffed under the couch next to the dining room table where I scrapbook. They’re close but hidden from my 3-year-old who loves glue and scissors. It just requires a flashlight to find things that have scooted toward the back! Ahh, maybe one day I’ll have a crafting room.
